The purity of silver:Silver in the Neo-Babylonian
and Achaemenid period
contained 1/8 alloy, i.e. silver had 87.5 % purity. Sometimes, and
chronologically
increasingly, silver is characterized as qalû,
"pure", which
may have had a higher purity. The tetradrachms of the Hellenistic
period
(see below) had purity well above 90%. Cf. Vargyas (2001) 13-17;
Mørkholm
(1991) 5.

Persia

1 Babylonian mina

=
6 karšâ

=
60 shekel

=
499.80 gr

1 karšâ

=
10 shekel

=
83.33 gr

1 shekel

=
8.33 gr

King Darius
I the Great introduced gold coinage based on the Babylonian
standard
(until then, the Lydian
standard of king Croesushad
been used). 1 gold piece (dareikos,
daric, statêr)
was between 8.25 and 8.46 gr of gold, which corresponds to the 8.33 gr
of the Babylonian shekel. Darics were struck in extremely pure gold,
98-99%.

Darius maintained the silver piece or siglos
on its old standard.
Sigloi were betwen 5.20 and 5.49 of silver. They had a 97-98% purity,
although
94-95% is recorded in the fourth century.

The later silver standard was 5.40-5.67 gr.

Phoenicia; Israel

The weight of the sheqel
was locally
different.

Palestinian sheqel
11.5 gr.

In the great trade
centers of the fifth and fourth
century, it was slightly above 7 gr.

An Athenian decree
about weights and measures (IG
II² 1013; late second century BCE?) includes that the emporike
mina, which had until then been equivalent to 138 coin-drachms,
henceforth
had to be equivalent to 150 coin-drachms.

Note.
In the Seleucid
empire the standard coin was the
tetradrachm, “stater”.
Development of weights: Alexander: 17.28 gr.; In Antioch: ca. 300 BC
17.00
gr.; ca. 172 BC: 16.80 gr.; ca. 105 BC 16.30 gr. – decline
well below 15.00
gr. Elsewhere in the second century the standard remained 16.80 gr.;
Athens
New Style tetradrachms show a weight increase to about 17.00 gr. from
the
16.60/16.80 of the preceding issues.In
the Ptolemaic empirePtolemy
I Soter began reducing the weight to 15.8 gr. > 14.9
> 14.3/14.4 gr.
in ca. 290 BC > 14.2 in the early first century BC.
(Mørkholm (1991)
8.